


Poison

by Arlome



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Birth, Darkfic, F/M, Gets dark, heavily based on Jewish texts, there's sex too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-06 00:02:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21217232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arlome/pseuds/Arlome
Summary: Eve regrets nothing.





	Poison

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ObliObla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/gifts).

> My undying thanks to [HiroMyStory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiroMyStory/pseuds/HiroMyStory) for doing the beta reading for this story. You're a gem, darling!
> 
> For my darling Obli, who prompted me with three simple words "seawater, plums and woodsmoke". I hope this meets your approval, my love.
> 
> Bucky, hold on to your smelling salts; you're going to need them :)

The air in the Garden is humid and heady, ripe with the pungent scents of lush plants. The soil is dark brown and moist, soft between the fingers when crushed, and the grass that springs from it is vibrant green and sturdy to the touch. The stars that peek through the canopy of leaves above are bright and brilliant, luminous in their heavenly glory, so far out of reach of outstretched hands, so lovely in their distant radiance.

She is staring up at these stars tonight, her head thrown back, long wavy tresses caked with fertile soil, as he who is as brilliant as his creations kisses the secret flesh between her naked thighs. Her fingers are buried in soft, black curls, tugging and pulling as she sighs and cries, the name of this great being sharp on her tongue. And he rises from between her thighs, gliding up her body, pressing her further into the fertile earth.

“Was that what you desired?” he asks, almost breathless, the air from his slick mouth musky-smelling and hot, his lips wet with her want against the skin of her neck.

“Yes,” she cries as he rises and falls between her bent knees, any thoughts of the man who spared her a rib entirely forgotten. “ _ Yes _ !”

The angel hums and gasps and clutches her thigh with desperate fingers as she swells and arches into him like the Euphrates.

“ _ Eve _ ,” he sings into her feverish flesh and spends himself into her womb.

She shivers as her body cools.

***

She realises something’s wrong when the blood that trickles down her thighs every so often suddenly doesn’t come. Her breasts are heavy, sensitive; her stomach tight and uneasy. When she vomits the figs she’s so ravenously eaten, Adam cries for help.

The angel who answers their call in not  _ her _ angel. Instead of soft, black curls, his golden hair is straight and long; the eyes that stare back at her are grey, not brown, but he is not unkind, and there is gentleness in him.

“Be not afraid,” he says gently, and she isn’t – not when she’s known one of his heavenly brethren so intimately. “My name is Gabriel, and I bring the word of God.”

“My woman is ill!” Adam cries, interrupting the angel, the note in his voice that of panic. “What is the problem with her?”

“She is not ill,” Gabriel answers, not taking his eyes off Eve. “Can you leave us for a while? She and I have much to discuss.”

Adam wanders off, disgruntled and humbled, beating a few bushes on his retreat. He is obviously annoyed at being left out, but he is not foolish enough to disobey a messenger of God. Silence stretches in his absence.

“What is wrong with me?” Eve asks once Adam is out of sight and earshot.

The angel shakes his head and clasps his hands at the front of his robe.

“Nothing,” he answers softly. “You are with child.”

“With child?” she asks, uncomprehending. She’s not heard the term before.

The angel nods.

“Yes,” he says, and one of his hands comes to rest on the slope of her naked belly, just above the belt of fig leaves. “A child grows in your womb. But – ”

“But what?” Eve presses as the angel trails off. She takes a step back, and his hand drops from her skin.

“The child,” he says, and his gentle voice is strained and heavy as if the information is causing him pain. “It is not entirely human. It is not  _ Adam’s _ . It is an abomination.”

“How dare you?” she demands, her eyebrows knitted together in rising anger. Such ugly words for innocence.

Eyes brown and warm rise in her mind; curls the colour of darkness and soft to the touch. How he spoke in her ear, his voice lilting like a stream of clear waters; the touch of his fingers hot and urgent on her skin. How he asked after her heart’s desire -- nobody has ever asked her what she wanted out of life.

She crosses her arms protectively over her abdomen – over the seed that took root in her womb. The angel’s brilliant smile is etched inside her eyelids as she shuts her eyes. Eve regrets nothing.

“Father is furious,” Gabriel continues sadly as if she’s not interrupted him, his eyes appear almost lost in the dim light of the Garden. Nighttime approaches and some early stars can be gleaned from between the swaying leaves. “He demands that you leave Eden immediately; he already banished Samael from Heaven for this. It was a long time coming – ” 

“Samael?” Eve interrupts, the blood rushing in her ears, rising in swells of utter panic in her veins. Banished. Where to? “He introduced himself as Lucifer.”

Gabriel winces and looks to the stars; his face is slack with heart-wrenching sadness.

“Yes,” he whispers, and his voice is tight and raw. “ _ Lucifer _ .”

Eve leans against an olive tree and vomits bile.

Banished.

_ Banished _ .

“I – I do not blame you, for being tempted,” Gabriel says hesitantly, bowing a little to catch the look on her face as she heaves and gasps for air. “Sam – Lucifer – he does that; being cruel and wicked – he shouldn’t have done that – ”

“He wasn’t cruel!” she cries, tears staining her cheeks. The strain on her body is making her exhausted and emotionally spent.

Gabriel looks at her with pity in his eyes. Rage rises in her belly and creeps up her throat at the sight.

“He wasn’t  _ wicked,”  _ she insists, wiping at her sullied mouth with the back of her hand. “He was kind, and attentive, and asked me what  _ I _ wanted.” Her voice loses its shrill notes, loses its edge as she sighs and looks away. “Nobody ever thought to ask before.”

Silence reigns, hefty and stubborn, and refuses to budge from its throne until Eve, resigned and defeated, asks, “What now, then?”

Gabriel doesn’t meet her eyes.

“I am tasked with escorting you out of the Garden,” he answers quietly, clearly not enjoying this forced-upon duty. “You must fend for yourselves from now on. The child – there’s no knowing what – ”

He doesn’t finish the thought, but she has an inkling of what this angel means to say.

The child may turn out to be a monster. A human-angel hybrid the world has not asked for. An outcast and an exile, just like his parents.

The scent of fertile earth upturned rises in her nostrils, the heady smell of fig leaves beneath her naked body; the glimpses of brightly twinkling stars beyond the moving curtains of ebony curls. His kisses hot on her eager mouth, and playful on the astonished lips of the mortal man.

“Alright,” she says, her voice detached and hollow.

Eve regrets nothing.

***

The scent of woodsmoke, heavy and thick, is lulling her into a fitful sleep.

The swell of her growing belly is in the way of proper rest, and the boisterous movements of the child within are making her uneasy and uncomfortable. Eve has no inkling of how much time has passed since the exile from Eden, has no notion of how long until this child is born; but her feet can hardly hold her, and her breath is short and shallow, and her belly heavy and full with the restless child.

“It must be soon,” Adam says one night as they sit by the fire he’s cultivated of dry leaves and twigs, in the cave they found for their home. “You cannot possibly grow larger.”

“How eloquently said,” she answers him, irritated. It doesn’t take much to irk her these days.

But Adam only smiles and rests a calloused hand upon her moving belly; life is not easy on them, outside of Eden.

“He’ll be a fierce one,” he says proudly, as if the feisty child in her guts is his, as if he was the one who grasped her parting thighs in passion and dug his knees into the ripe soil beneath their naked bodies.

But perhaps, in his delusional mind, he was.

“Yes,” she agrees, and looks at the rising embers in the dancing fire. “Yes.”

***

When the tightening pain comes for her, she tries to grit her teeth and bear it. But as the hours pass, and the pain intensifies, her resolve and powers dwindle, and she prays for death.

Adam is beside himself with worry, lingering at the edge of her vision at the mouth of the cave, poised to run at the slightest indication – whether it is to or from her, she cannot say. She can hear him praying, can hear him begging for help, incantations upon incantations of atoning words, pleading for mercy on their behalf.

“Please, God,  _ please _ .” She can hear him murmuring through the pounding in her ears and the tremors in her body. “Don’t let them die, I beseech you; don’t let them die.”

‘ _ Why not? _ ’ she wishes to ask him – would if she could, really – ‘ _ Why not let me die so I can be free of this pain? Free of this life?’ _

But she doesn’t ask, and the fervent muttering continues as droplets of blood diluted with clear fluid dribble down her parted thighs and seep into the blanket of leaves on which she writhes in agony.

Her womb tightens and hardens, her knees bruising as she squats on the leaves; she cries in anguish, unable to contain the swell of excruciating pain in her abdomen any longer.  _ Lovely brown eyes look down at her kindly, moist lips pepper her skin with forbidden kisses _ . She cries, delirious with the ache of childbirth, as she did then when he was inside her.

_ “Was this what you desired?” he breathes into her hair, his taut belly pressed into her hip. “Was this freedom?” _

_ “Yes,” she answers, laughing, kissing the fingertips of his clever hands. “Yes!” _

The seed in her womb has blossomed into a tree, and she cries and bears down, and yelps as the roots tear her from within.

She prays for death, she prays for freedom, she prays to  _ him _ .

The child leaves her body in a flood of liquid and blood, and she catches its little pink form in her trembling hands before it hits the ground. It squirms and cries in her arms, the flesh soiled and hot against her slick skin, as it greedily pulls her aching nipple into its hungry little mouth. Eve cries as her womb tightens again and again with every pull.

Dark curls are plastered to the little skull, covered in drying blood. She wishes for the child to open his eyes and look at her with the familiar warmth that she craves in her dreams.

But Cain is born with eyes the colour of the heavens in which his father hung his greatest star.

God has a nasty sense of humour.

***

Cain grows up looking nothing like his father. Eve cannot decide if it is a blessing or a curse.

He becomes sure-footed and strong-willed, headstrong and chillingly calculating. She does not see herself in him, and no trace of the warmth and brightness of the smiling angel that sowed this little seed of destruction, can be found in the clear-eyed boy.

She studies him with great interest from the corner of her eye, tracing his movements and actions with the trepidation of an anxious mother. She’s no notion of what it is she should be looking for, no inkling of how he may be different from a regular child. At least, not until Abel is born. 

The two boys are vastly different from one another. Where Cain is silent and still, Abel is animated and loud, and while Cain’s eyes are bright and cool, Abel’s are dark and glistening.

Adam, perhaps feeling the blood connection on a subconscious level, prefers the younger boy, and even though Eve tries to show equal love to both sons, she fears in the privacy of her heart that she does the same. There’s little affection in Cain’s touch, he rarely embraces his mother in fondness.

Gabriel’s words plague her dreams.

***

Jealousy disrupts their daily life. Cain and Abel fight over everything.

Doubt and fear creep into the tightness of Eve’s heart.

“There’s something rotten inside this boy,” Adam says to her one day, and she cannot help but wonder if there is truth in his whispered words. What if, together with the seed, poison was also planted in her womb that night beneath the stars?

Guilt festers in her chest like an open, sucking wound, oozing remorse and shame like leaking puss. She beats her tightly closed fist across her heart at night, lying next to the man who sired but one of her sons, and prays quietly for forgiveness.

In the silent hours of the creeping dawn, tears gliding down her temples, dampening her chestnut locks, she cannot say to whom she prays.

Is it to the Father, or to the Son?

***

He comes before her, blood dripping from his clenching fingers, wildness in his clear blue eyes.

The air leaves her lungs in a choking instant, her chest burns with icy tightness that threatens to crush and rip her trachea apart. She cannot move her legs. There’s a crimson-stained rock in her son’s hand. Hair and skin and matter smear its protruding edges.

“Mother!” he cries, voice feral and agitated, full of emotion for once. “Mother, I didn’t mean to! Abel – he, he came at me first!”

She’s choking on trapped air, the panic rising in her throat like bile, belly clenching in grieving spasms. Her gentle boy, her sweet, brown-eyed son – her palms drag across the hard earth, catching on tiny, sharp pebbles and tearing at the skin. Blood stains her flesh; blood …  _ blood _ –

“Out of my sight,” Adam roars, his clenched fists shaking, whole body trembling with aching rage. “I never wish to lay eyes upon you again!”

But Cain stands immobile, cold eyes pleading with her, begging for understanding. And she thinks she comprehends, she thinks she knows what he’s trying to ask of her.

‘ _ Not my fault, Mother. _ ’ The eyes seem to beseech her, ‘ _ I am not to be blamed for the sins of my fathers. Have you not conceived me in sin? I cannot help what I am.” _

Eve cannot move, cannot speak; her palms raw and bloody. Abel’s corpse lies bashed and battered in the field, the skull caved in and broken. Blood seeps into the fertile soil, staining the earth, poisoning the life she led in lies.

Her gentle boy, her sweet, brown-eyed son –

The young man who once left her body screaming and squirming, who blossomed in her womb, conceived of divine passion and broken dreams of free will, looks down at her with blood in his vacant eyes.

She does not see herself in him, nor that warm eyed being who paid for their desire with his freedom. Banished,  _ banished – an exile, like his parents. _

Cain stands rooted to the ground a moment longer and then, the dripping rock still in his rigid hand, turns and leaves.

She doesn’t watch him go.

***

Eve does not expect to reach the Silver City when she dies.

She expects the void, the sorrow, expects the misery and pain. But when the light fades, and her breathing halts and deep silence consumes her weary bones, she is greeted by silver.

Gabriel takes her hand in his and warmth fills her, her skin is smooth and hot to the touch; youth everlasting slides into her soul, brightening her fatigued being from within.

“Welcome, Eve.” The angel smiles at her, his voice gentle and pleasant, as if welcoming an old friend. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Arches white and tall tower over her head, streams and silver mist shimmer in the distance. Eve looks around herself with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

“Why am I here?” she asks, her voice hollow and distant as if this experience has nothing to do with her, as if she is just burrowing this soul for a little trip. “Why am I not – ”

“You have suffered enough,” Gabriel intercedes, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder and guiding her towards a fountain that gurgles clear, foamy water that spills over its rounded edges, and seeps into the ground.

‘ _ And what of your brother _ ?’ She wishes to ask the gentle angel beside her. ‘ _ Has he suffered enough _ ?’

But she doesn’t. Wherever Lucifer is, Heaven doesn’t speak of it.

“Where is Abel?” Eve inquires instead; if this is indeed the afterlife, he ought to be here. “I wish to see my son.”

Gabriel stiffens and stops.

“Abel is not here,” he replies slowly, weighing his words carefully. “He’s …  _ below _ .”

Eve doesn’t understand.

“Below?” she asks, uncomprehending, her eyes drifting over the optically pleasing horizon. “There are levels to this place?”

The angel winces and looks away, his gaze fixed on his sandals.

“No,” he says at last, quiet and reluctant, “when I say ‘below’… Abel is at the mercy of the Devil now.”

Banished.

_ Banished _ .

Where to?

Eve looks at Gabriel’s sandals, her large doe eyes unblinking. Below.  _ Below _ .

“The Devil?” she asks, and her voice feels distant as if it was left on earth in the decomposing meat sack that used to be her for a few centuries. Gabriel does not raise his eyes.

“He who reigns over the guilty in his rotting kingdom,” he explains uneasily, shifting in emotional agitation. He does not wish to discuss this with her.

Eve doesn’t need to ask to know who the Devil is. Her dead womb tightens in recollection of his warm, brown eyes.

“My sweet boy was guilty of nothing,” she intones, the phantom ache of broken limbs and putrid flesh spreading through her spirit like wildfire, consuming the light of the heavens in its wake.

_ ‘And neither was your brother,’ _ she thinks, but holds her tongue in check. What good will it do to confront this angel who clearly aches and yearns for days past? Who misses the angel of light and song that was cast from this city, wings broken, and body wrecked, into the burning pits of festering guilt?

Banished.

_ Banished _ .

She finally knows where to.

***

Eternal life in the Silver City is nothing short of Hell.

She may not be imprisoned in a dark chamber, the chains on her door rattling and clinking with the heavy weight of her guilt, but what she endures in Heaven is not far from captivity.

Alone in paradise with a man who keeps lounging all day, pining for his demon wife, Eve is forced to watch reunion upon reunion of dead souls, parading before her through the pearly gates of this wretched place, while she is forever separated from her two sons. Happy, relieved faces pass her by, cries of joy and recollection grating on her nerves – she’s sick of it all. The boredom settles in her vacant stomach and turns to lead.

She takes to greeting the newly departed souls at the gates, before their inevitable reunion with their long-gone family members; before she has the chance to feel the familiar pain of loss and sorrow. She must be the least happy soul in the Silver City. And sometimes, when she catches Gabriel looking at her with his knowing look, she imagines that the entire heavenly host is aware of the fact.

Things change when Amenadiel brings Charlotte Richards through the large gates, his face awash with tears.

Eve is fascinated by the woman, who is as out of place in this city as she is, and watches in captivated interest as flocks of angels come to seek her out, no doubt intrigued to gaze upon the woman whose body served as the earthly shell of their prodigal mother for a short while.

It takes time for Eve to approach the dead lawyer.

“I am the mother of the man who killed you,” is the first thing to leaves her reluctant lips, and Charlotte looks up at her in astonishment from her peaceful seat in the garden. Eve squares her shoulders and hardens her heart for ire and rejection, but the other woman only smiles sadly and moves a little to the right.

“Please,” she says, and her voice is kind and peaceful, “have a seat.”

They talk, and they cry, and they hold hands, and Eve feels something akin to freedom for the first time in centuries.

She knows what she needs to do.

***

The scent of plums is heady in her nostrils as she moves through the colourful stands of the busy marketplace. Shouts and cries and haggling lies ride on the humid air like flying carpets, and Eve looks to the brilliant blue sky – the colour of her dead son’s eyes – and lets the sun touch her newborn skin.

It doesn’t take much for her to weasel her way onto that ridiculous plane; she is a beautiful woman, after all. Her body is made for admiration, her eyes large and fair; her breasts are tight again, with renewed life and determination, and she smiles and laughs and giggles all the way to the Devil’s home.

She smells seawater, and she smells smoke, and she smells sweat, and then she smells  _ him _ , and the world stops.

***

Her eyes catch the image of his head between her thighs in the reflective ceiling panels. Gone are the curls, soft to the touch, regrettably replaced by coifed strands bent into perfection. He's different now, no doubt corrupted by aeons of servitude in perdition, by millennia of reigning over guilt and sin. His eyes are still the eyes she remembers from the darkness of the Garden, but the warmth of them is dulled, blunt like a rusty knife that’s lost its purpose. There’s an edge of cruelty to him, of chaos and destruction, and she latches on to these little specks of Hell, hoping to catch some second-hand guilt and damnation.

He’s different from that young celestial being who worshipped at her open thighs, knees deep in fertile earth, fingers grasping at her naked flesh. For one thing, he doesn’t fuck like an angel anymore.

He slides into her with the comfortable familiarity of an ex who remembers all the faces and pleasures of his past lovers.

And it's good – so good – better than it was in Eden when his eager talent made up for what he lacked in experience.

She gasps and cries and rides him till his eyes shine bright again, and he writhes and sighs beneath her, rising and falling like the tide. And when she comes undone, her fingers digging into the muscles of his chest, her skin moist with sweat and blame, her heart tightens with words she cannot say.

***

“I must tell you something,” she says when they lie in bed one night. He’s still dressed in his shirtsleeves and trousers, but she’s already naked under the expensive covers, encased in sin and decadence.

He turns to her, gives her a distracted little smile. His phone is still in his hands; he’s texting Chloe. Their recent case is clearly on his mind, much more so than the woman in his bed.

Bile rises in her throat, her stomach clenching in hurt and just a hint of jealousy.

“What is it, darling?” he purrs half-heartedly, and his hand begins snaking up her sheet-covered thigh. She bites her lower lip, and not in passion, but his eyes light up a little all the same.

“Is it something very naughty?” He laughs, and his voice is raspy and low; he drops the phone at the foot of the bed. “Go on, my little temptress; you can tell me.” 

Eve leans over and whispers poison in his ear.

She watches as the lustful look on his face morphs into one of unrestrained horror; watches as he jumps from their bed and stumbles backwards in despair, as he nearly falls down the stairs in his haste to get away from her. Her eyes are sad and mournful as she takes in his contorted form, bent over his piano in anguish and revulsion.

Lucifer falls to his knees and vomits bile and blood.

And for the first time in millennia, Eve regrets.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know, I know.... this isn't the third chapter of Something Wicked... Real Life was a kick in the arse these last two months, and it's taking every little bit of my will to continue writing. Hopefully, this will help.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Like Father, Like Son](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21590839) by [ObliObla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla)


End file.
